Accessibility Studies of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids from the Sun-Earth L2 Libration Point

Abstract: A newly proposed F-class mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2019,Comet Interceptor, aims to dynamically intercept a New Solar System Objectsuch as a Dynamically New Comet (DNC). The Spacecraft will be placed in aperiodic (Halo) orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point, waiting for furtherinstructions about the passage of a comet or an asteroid, which could well bereached within the stipulated mission constraints.A major part of the detection of these bodies will be owed to the Large SynopticSurvey Telescope (Currently under construction in Chile), which hopes to vastlyincrease the ability to discover a possible target using the catalogue of LongPeriod Comets and a set of its orbits. It is suggested that, in a mission length of<5 years, discoveries and warnings are possible so that optimization of thetrajectory and characterisation of the object are done within the set windows.This thesis is aimed at facilitating a transfer to a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid(PHA), a subset of the Near-Earth Objects (NEO), as a secondary choice on theoff-chance that the discovered comet could not be reached from the L2 Librationpoint within the mission constraints.The first section of this thesis deals with the selection of a Potentially HazardousAsteroid for our mission from the larger database of the Near-Earth Objects,based on a measure of impact hazard called the Palermo Scale, while the secondsection of the thesis aims to obtain a suitable Halo orbit around L2 through ananalytical construction method. After a desired orbit is found, the invariantmanifolds around the Halo orbit are constructed and analysed in an attempt toreduce the ΔV, where from the spacecraft can intercept the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid through the trajectory demanding the least energy.